Member of NJ’s Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault Shares Goals

Eighty-four rapes were reported on New Jersey college campuses, according to federal data for 2014, the most recent year for which stats are available. The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault indicates that one in five women is sexually assaulted in college.

Those disquieting statistics help explain the existence of New Jersey’s new task force for student sexual assault, which just met for the first time. Helen Archontou, the CEO of the Bergen County YWCA, is a member of the task force and stopped by NJTV to discuss some of its goals and concerns.

Archontou said that the group’s goals include:

to evaluate what’s happening on our college campuses;

to look at the legislation that is out there and what’s currently being proposed;

to look at some of the best practices around the country;

and to put forward a report to give some guidance and direction to strengthen our initiatives here in New Jersey.

Archontou also discussed how her experience with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office of Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit helped shape her beliefs about the victims of sex crimes:

“I think I have a tremendous understanding from that experience about working with individuals that are survivors of such experiences, and what they carry with them and how important it really is for us to do right by them and come up with the right policies to protect our communities and the citizens of our state from having to go through any of the experiences that they did.